Jasper John’s plain old painting of an American flag fetched $25 million this week. Seriously, any child with masking tape and a star stencil from a dollar store could have painted it. Same goes for Andy Warhol — all junk — but if you called it that in 1974 you would be a social outcast and you wouldn’t be able to hang out with Liza Minnelli. Darn!
The art world is faker than the stock market. The dealers who sell this crap laugh at the people who buy it. If you say that a car muffler draped in Saran Wrap looks like a piece of shit, the oh-so-sophisticated art people dismiss you as a Philistine, but since some people want to be part of that art world, they play along.
All the great art has already been done and the only thing we have left as an art form is cinema, yet motions pictures like Dark Victory and The Wizard of Oz (both made in 1939) are far, far better examples of cinema as an art form than are Avatar (2009) and Ironman (2010) — so that’s like going backwards at the speed of light. When I personally stand up and say that both movies stink, and I eventually will, I will make enemies and I will never again be invited to dinner parties given by simpletons — oh well?
One last thing — I am indeed a Philistine but I would gladly compliment any second grader who could paint a picture of the American Flag so well.
